Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

25

South Indian Nationalists

Bharati slipped through the Madras police net to Pondicherry in September 1908. That fateful year 1908.

The colonial rulers were no sleepyheads. Once they swung into action against the Nationalists, they did a thorough job ... to the worst of their abilities.

From May 1908, the Anglo-Indian government began filling up its prisons with the Bengali group of Nationalists—even a whiff of suspicion was enough to land a youth in prison, even a passer-by near a public meeting was not spared a jail sentence.

The principal culprits, 'the prime movers' as the government put it, were the Ghose brothers; especially the "founder of the violence section of the Bengali revolutionary party," Babu Arabindo Ghose. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, after a summary trial, was deported in July to Mandalay in Burma to suffer a prolonged solitary confinement. He was released only in June 1914. Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab, no corner of the country was spared the panic reaction of the government against Swaraj.

It was the great good fortune of Tamil literature that Bharati listened to his friends and escaped to French India. Otherwise,

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given his predilection to face the music, he would have met with the same fate as his compatriots V. O. Chidambaram Pillai (V. O. C.), Subrahmanya Siva¹ and so many others. To the jolly tune of 'white man's justice' the Indians were made to dance the macabre dance of death.

Anglo-Indian ferocity was let loose against Indians. The deeds of British bureaucrats were heinous beyond words. Let us take but the cases of V. O. C. and Siva.² V. O. C.. arrested without rhyme or reason, was given two—two—life sentences of transportation (later reduced to six years) by the specially appointed Sessions judge; Siva was given ten years' imprisonment. But instead of deporting V. O. C. immediately to the Andamans, the worthy officials sent the political prisoner to jail in Coimbatore to undergo hard labour. So for four years, from 1908 to 1912 V. O. C.. suffered all the horrors of a criminal sentenced to rigorous imprisonment. As for Siva, a political prisoner he too, he was thrown into the Trichinopolyjail, in the same cell where criminals with leprosy were lodged.³ "The prison system of the European nations" Sri Aurobindo wrote (1909) from his personal experience, "is only a refined and systematised savagery perpetuating the methods of ancient and mediaeval barbarity in forms that do not at once shock the eye."

And pray, what was their crime, of these eminent men?

¹ Born Subrahmanya Iyer, this Brahmin from Batlagundu in Madura district changed his caste name Iyer to Siva.

2 Facts in the cases of V. O. C. and Siva are taken from Madras Presidency in Pre-Gandhian Era, by Saroja Sundararajan.

³ Both V. O. C. and Siva were released on 24 December 1912. and kept under close surveillance.

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To begin with they were Nationalists. V. O. C. and Bharati had even attended the Surat Congress, forming part of a group of thirty from Madras. As such they tried to put into practice the scheme of the Nationalists 'to prepare the nation' for regeneration. "The schemes by which we seek to prepare the nation," Sri Aurobindo explained in the Bande Mataram of 11 April 1908, "the scheme of industrial regeneration, the scheme of educational regeneration, the scheme of political regeneration through self-help are subordinate features of the deeper regeneration which the country must go through before it can be free."

We know, of course, to what extent of impoverishment the colonial rulers had reduced India. Cleverly the government brought out laws upon unjust laws not only to muzzle free expression, but to murder India's artistic and industrial capacity. Well, the public-spirited V. O. C, for his part, established at Tuticorin the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (registered ort 10 October 1906). Srinivasachari's entire family, including his brother and brother-in-law, were his great supporters in this venture. The Company's two ships served as passenger and cargo, and plied between Tuticorin and Colombo. Its aim was to facilitate movements of goods, and to free Indian manufacturers from the British commercial monopoly. The South Indian merchants immediately patronized the new Indian enterprise. To the utter shock of European merchants, the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company became a successful venture. So successful that the foreign merchants turned green with envy, and put great pressure on vexed British bureaucracy to act. The arrest of V. O. C. was nothing if not commercial jealousy.

What filled the bureaucrats' cup of ire was the affair of

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the Coral Mills. There is no need to repeat how the working class in India was treated by its white masters. Nationalists were much moved by the repression on their countrymen. Foremost among them was Sri Aurobindo. "The condition of the poorer classes in this country," he wrote in the Bande Mataram,^] "is a subject which has till now been too much neglected." He was concerned with the economic condition of the poor, naturally, but more worrisome to him was the moral side "which is even more important." Because the poor peasants were being brutalized by unexampled oppression and bestialized. "We have heard of villages where the liquor shop and the prostitute, institutions unknown twenty-five years ago, have now the mastery of the poorest villagers," wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1908.

Coral Mills was a British venture in Tuticorin. On 27 February 1908 the mill hands struck work protesting against their oppressed condition. Under the leadership of V. O. C. and Siva the people conducted themselves "with a marvelous combination of firmness and dignity, with quiet self-control" and gave "absolutely no hold to the excited bureaucrats," wrote Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram (4 March 1908). He continued. "We can only suppose that as the self-assertion of Indian labour has evoked the enthusiastic support of the people, so the menace to the despotic control of the labour market by British capital has been taken by the bureaucrats as a blow aimed at British rule.... The people seem to have found worthy leaders in Sits. Chidambaram Pillai and Subramaniya Siva and have so far held their own in the struggle. We await further developments with

¹ 'The Next Step,' an article dated 31 March 1908.

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interest and with confidence in their courage and discretion." Appreciatively Sri Aurobindo observed, "This is not the first instance in which Madras has shown how deeply it is imbued with the spirit of a strong and enthusiastic Nationalism."

The country did not have to wait long for the outcome of the Tuticorin struggle. On 13 March the Bande Mataram announced that "the great battle fought over the Coral Mills has ended in a great and indeed absolutely sweeping victory for the people. Every claim made by the strikers has been conceded and British capital has had to submit to the humiliation of an unconditional surrender. Nationalism may well take pride in the gallant leaders who have by their cool and unflinching courage brought about this splendid vindication of Nationalist teaching." With one stroke a bond was established between the educated class and the masses.

The humiliated government, however, began to impose restrictions upon the Swadeshi Line. Ashe, Sub-collector and Joint Magistrate of Tuticorin, opined that as the Swadeshi Company admitted Indians only as shareholders and excluded Europeans, it was a clear case of promoting sedition and class hatred, therefore liable to prosecution by the law. A panicked administration lost all sense and indulged in insane acts. V. O. C. and his associates were arbitrarily arrested and denied bail. Trouble began. People's passion flared up. A mob smashed some furniture, broke some windows, and wrecked some government buildings, and forced some Europeans to say 'Bande Mataram.' They did not take a single life. But Ashe, the Sub-collector of Tuticorin, ordered the police to open fire which killed several men. "The campaign of repression proceeds merrily

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in Madras," reported the Bande Mataram on 26 March 1908. "Srijuts Chidambaram Pillai and Subramaniya Shiva are to be prosecuted for sedition (we notice, by the way, that Srijut Pillai was not allowed to see his Vakils in jail, a typical piece of bureaucratic 'justice'), the Tuticorin lawyers are being bound down to keep the peace, and it is reported that instructions have been issued to the Sub-Magistrate, Tinnevelly, to issue warrants for the arrest of persons shouting 'Bande Mataram' within the limits of Tinnevelly and Palancotta. Meanwhile people crowd round the jail gates and line the roads to get a glimpse of the faces of their imprisoned leaders."

The Modern Review of December 1908 wrote in an editorial: "It is some consolation that in the Tinnevelly Sedition case, Mr. Chidambaram Pillai's sentence has been reduced from transportation for life to one of six years; though we are of opinion that he ought not to have been punished at all. That he is being made to do the hardest work of criminals is illegal and unjustifiable. The police reporters in this case on whose evidence he was convicted were not skilled in the art of reporting. Some of them are said to have taken down speeches in English as they were delivered in Tamil! The mother-tongue of the principal witness was Hindustani, and not Tamil."

This was not the first time nor was it going to be the last when this kind of 'evidence' was to serve the cause of 'justice.' The editorial takes a look at the stand taken by Lord Morley "when he was plain Mr. Morley." "In an address to Englishmen," said the editorial, "Morley cited the case of an Irishman convicted on the evidence of a police constable, a short-hand writer who did not know short hand! At the end he asked his

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English audience, 'Would you endure to be under exceptional repressive legislation of this kind so administered? I do not believe you would.' " Commented the editor, "But what is sauce for even the Irish goose is not sauce for the Indian gander."

Yes, the good Lord Morley was not in the least bothered by such 'sheer caricature of evidence' as he put it, admitted by many judges in Indian courts, and harsh sentences passed on gentlemen far superior to these underlings.

V. O. C., Siva and other Nationalists did not haggle with Providence. They put all they had for the Motherland. Quite unlike the Moderates. When in December 1908 the All-India Congress Committee session was held in Madras no mention was made about the imprisonment of V. O. C. or Siva. But the delegates, all Moderates, sang lustily Vande Mataram to the tune of God Save the King....

The Bande Mataram of Calcutta, on the contrary, lavished praise on V. O. C. "All honour to Chidambaram Pillai for having shown us the first complete example of an Aryan reborn, and all honour to Madras which has produced such a man."

Sri Aurobindo, writing in the Bande Mataram (23 March 1908) said, "The Madras Standard has undoubtedly hit the right nail on the head when it derives the Tinnevelly disturbances from the establishment of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company and the attempt to throw difficulties in the way of its success." He summed up the situation. "The struggle generated an acute feeling on both sides and when the commercial war extended itself and the people took sides with Indian labour against British capital in the affair of the Coral Mills, the patience of the English officials gave way and they rushed to the help of

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their mercantile caste-fellows, misusing the sacred seal of justice and the strong arm of power as instruments to maintain their trade supremacy. This unjust and unwarrantable action has been responsible for the riots and the corpses of dead men lying with their gaping wounds uncared for in Tinnevelly streets,— uncared for but not forgotten in the book of divine reckoning." Sri Aurobindo added with his clear vision. "Nations as well as individuals are subject to the law of karma, and in the present political and industrial revolt British rule in India is paying for the commercial rapacity which impelled it to prefer trade returns to justice and kingly duty and use its political power to turn India from a land of fabulous wealth into a nation of starving millions." The Rishi spoke. "The payment has only just begun —for these karmic debts are usually repaid with compound interest."

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